Impersonations

In the spirit of halloween, I would like to momentarily deviate from standup to talk about my favorite impersonation of somebody else ever performed by a standup comedian. Will Ferrell, whose standup career hasn’t exactly been defining, plays the best George W. Bush that I’ve ever seen. I spent a few weeks figuring out how to do a Bush impression, and towards the end I stumbled upon a video of Will Ferrell performing on @midnight with Chris Hardwick. First, when Will walks on stage, he purses his lips in a really specific way. I’ve never seen any other Bush impersonator do this before, and to be honest I’m not even sure if Bush himself does it, but it just seems so much like something Bush would do, that in my mind it makes the performance (and has the audience laughing before Ferrell speaks). Now, obviously his impression is pretty good, but so is everyone else’s, so that doesn’t really matter to me. If you watch closely, Ferrell reaches out to shake the audience members’ hands, and just shakes the air. This is an amazing display of stupidity combined with manipulation, which some would say is an excellent representation of George W. Throughout the performance, Ferrell keeps coming back to the Cheesecake Factory. Drawing on southern stereotypes, as well as what most people think of as shitty food, picking out the Cheesecake Factory specifically is not the worst idea. It is not the smartest use of a reference, but it definitely doesn’t hurt. My least favorite thing about the performance is that Bush seemed at times to be vehemently against Trump, which is fairly out of character for the Bush that Ferrell was portraying for the rest of the set. Not that I didn’t love “sack of rotting sweet potatoes”.

https://youtu.be/Kuk40ot8jFs